Now the question is this: why is the American Fifth Fleet in Bahrain? Answer: because of the oil and to threaten Iran. That is why the White House supports the regime in Bahrain which shoots and kills its own population. In the meantime the US authorities claim they want a democracy in Iran. Nobody in his right mind believes this, but still the massmedia pretend Obama and his crew really want this. Propaganda. The New York Times:
Pentagon Watching Unrest in Bahrain
By THOM SHANKER and J. DAVID GOODMAN
Published: February 17, 2011
WASHINGTON — The United States Navy headquarters in Bahrain, the tiny Persian Gulf nation whose capital was rocked Thursday by a violent police crackdown on antigovernment protesters, oversees warships and combat aircraft that carry out long-range missions across Afghanistan and Iraq, conduct antipiracy patrols off the Horn of Africa — and keep a wary eye on the activities of a bellicose Iran.
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But the Fifth Fleet compound itself looks like little more than a modern office park in a quiet neighborhood of Manama, the capital, whose piers occasionally host a warship but never a sustained presence of hulking vessels comparable to bases in, say, Norfolk, Va., or Yokosuka, Japan.
Day by day, the Fifth Fleet is at sea and in the air, across 2.5 million square miles of water.
In Manama, a city that is more open and socially welcoming to foreigners than those in much of the restrictive Arab world, American personnel live out in the community, and not in isolation.
And thus far, Navy officers are quick to point out, the street protests have given voice to a disenfranchised Shiite majority’s complaints about Bahrain’s leadership — but the United States has not been cast as a villain, despite six decades of close ties with the governing Sunni elite.
“We are monitoring what’s going on,” said Cmdr. Amy Derrick-Frost, the Fifth Fleet spokeswoman. “The protests and demonstrations are not against the United States or the United States military or anything of that nature.”
Military personnel, Defense Department civilians, contractors and their families — numbering about 6,100 in total — have been advised to avoid areas where the protests were taking place, but as of late Thursday there was no order to evacuate dependents.
“We do not have any information at this time that suggests that planned protests are likely to cause significant disruptions,” said Jennifer Stride, a spokeswoman for the Naval Support Activity, which oversees the military complex. “We will continue to monitor the situation.”
The Navy has had a presence in Bahrain since Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency, well before it took over a British army base east of Manama, in 1971, when the country achieved full independence.
The 100-acre naval base is in Juffair, a suburb six miles from Pearl Square in the center of the capital, where thousands of mostly Shiite protesters were attacked by security forces early Thursday morning.
Though the base is physically separated from its piers, Ms. Stride said there was “no concern” about being cut off if protests were to widen. “There are no demonstrations at all in the vicinity of the base or those piers,” she said.
The broad mission of the Fifth Fleet includes combat, counterterrorism, air support for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, antipiracy efforts and military exercises with regional allies, including Bahrain.
Much of the fleet’s time is spent watching Iran’s two navies — the more professional Iranian state fleet and the less predictable Revolutionary Guard navy that has harassed American warships in recent years.
The United States and Bahrain signed a 10-year defense pact in 1991 that includes American training of Bahraini forces; it was renewed in 2001, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
“Bahrain has few external security options other than relying on some degree of U.S. security guarantee,” said a study by the research service released last month. “The United States has designated Bahrain as a ‘major non-NATO ally,’ and it provides small amounts of security assistance to Bahrain.”
The Fifth Fleet’s area of responsibility includes waters that touch 20 countries along the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean. The area includes the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Bab el Mandeb at the southern tip of Yemen — all strategic passages for international shipping.
“As a longtime ally and home to the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, Bahrain is an important partner and the department is closely watching developments there,” said Col. David Lapan of the Marine Corps, a Pentagon spokesman. “We also call on all parties to exercise restraint and refrain from violence.”
Thom Shanker reported from Washington, and J. David Goodman from New York.
Bahrain Turmoil Poses Fresh Test for White House
Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Salmaniya Medical Complex on Thursday while waiting for news of the wounded. More Photos »
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN and MARK LANDLER
Published: February 17, 2011
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Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
Women in Manama on Thursday mourned the protesters who were killed and wounded by the police in Pearl Square. More Photos »
As the army patrolled with tanks and heavily armed soldiers, the once-peaceful protesters were transformed into a mob of angry mourners chanting slogans like “death to Khalifa,” the king, while the opposition withdrew from the Parliament and demanded that the government step down. At the main hospital following the violence, thousands gathered screaming, crying and collapsing in grief.
For the Obama administration, it was the Egypt scenario in miniature in this tiny Persian Gulf state, a struggle to avert broader instability and protect its interests — Bahrain is the base of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet — while voicing support for the democratic aspiration of the protesters.
The United States said it strongly opposed the use of violence. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain’s foreign minister on Thursday morning to convey “our deep concern about the actions of the security forces,” she said. President Obama did not publicly address the crackdown, but his press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the White House was urging Bahrain to use restraint in responding to “peaceful protests.”
In some ways, the administration’s calculations are even more complicated here, given Bahrain’s proximity to Saudi Arabia, another Sunni kingdom of vital importance to Washington. Unlike in Egypt, where the struggle was between democracy and dictatorship, Bahrain is suffering a flare-up in old divisions between its ruling Sunni Muslim minority and restive Shiites, who constitute 70 percent of the local population of 500,000.
This has broader regional implications, experts and officials said, since Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its eastern, oil-producing districts and the Shiite government in Iran would like to extend its influence over this nearby island kingdom. Shiite political figures in Bahrain deny that their goal is to institute an Islamic theocracy like that in Tehran.
For those who were in the traffic circle known as Pearl Square when the police opened fire without warning on thousands who were sleeping there, it was a day of shock and disbelief. Many of the hundreds taken to the hospital were wounded by shotgun blasts, doctors said, their bodies speckled with pellets or bruised by rubber bullets or police clubs.
In the morning, there were three bodies already stretched out on metal tables in the morgue at Salmaniya Medical Complex: Ali Mansour Ahmed Khudair, 53, dead, with 91 pellets pulled from his chest and side; Isa Abd Hassan, 55, dead, his head split in half; Mahmoud Makki Abutaki, 22, dead, 200 pellets of birdshot pulled from his chest and arms.
Doctors said that at least two others had died and that several patients were in critical condition with serious wounds. Muhammad al-Maskati, of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said he had received at least 20 calls from frantic parents searching for young children.
A surgeon, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that for hours on Thursday the Health Ministry prevented ambulances even from going to the scene to aid victims. The doctor said that in the early morning, when the assault was still under way, police officers beat a paramedic and a doctor and refused to allow medical staff to attend to the wounded. News agencies in Bahrain reported that the health minister, Faisal al-Hamar, resigned after doctors staged a demonstration to protest his order barring ambulances from going to the square.
In the bloodstained morgue, Ahmed Abutaki, 29, held his younger brother’s cold hand, tearfully recalling the last time they spoke Wednesday night. “He said, ‘This is my chance, to have a say, so that maybe our country will do something for us,’ ” he recalled of his brother’s decision to camp out in the circle. “My country did do something; it killed him.”
There was collective anxiety as Friday approached and people waited to see whether the opposition would challenge the government’s edict to stay off the streets — and if it did, whether the government would follow through on its threat to use “every strict measure and deterrent necessary to preserve security and general order.” Both sides said they would not back down.
For the Obama administration, it was the Egypt scenario in miniature in this tiny Persian Gulf state, a struggle to avert broader instability and protect its interests — Bahrain is the base of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet — while voicing support for the democratic aspiration of the protesters.
The United States said it strongly opposed the use of violence. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called Bahrain’s foreign minister on Thursday morning to convey “our deep concern about the actions of the security forces,” she said. President Obama did not publicly address the crackdown, but his press secretary, Jay Carney, said that the White House was urging Bahrain to use restraint in responding to “peaceful protests.”
In some ways, the administration’s calculations are even more complicated here, given Bahrain’s proximity to Saudi Arabia, another Sunni kingdom of vital importance to Washington. Unlike in Egypt, where the struggle was between democracy and dictatorship, Bahrain is suffering a flare-up in old divisions between its ruling Sunni Muslim minority and restive Shiites, who constitute 70 percent of the local population of 500,000.
This has broader regional implications, experts and officials said, since Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority in its eastern, oil-producing districts and the Shiite government in Iran would like to extend its influence over this nearby island kingdom. Shiite political figures in Bahrain deny that their goal is to institute an Islamic theocracy like that in Tehran.
For those who were in the traffic circle known as Pearl Square when the police opened fire without warning on thousands who were sleeping there, it was a day of shock and disbelief. Many of the hundreds taken to the hospital were wounded by shotgun blasts, doctors said, their bodies speckled with pellets or bruised by rubber bullets or police clubs.
In the morning, there were three bodies already stretched out on metal tables in the morgue at Salmaniya Medical Complex: Ali Mansour Ahmed Khudair, 53, dead, with 91 pellets pulled from his chest and side; Isa Abd Hassan, 55, dead, his head split in half; Mahmoud Makki Abutaki, 22, dead, 200 pellets of birdshot pulled from his chest and arms.
Doctors said that at least two others had died and that several patients were in critical condition with serious wounds. Muhammad al-Maskati, of the Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights, said he had received at least 20 calls from frantic parents searching for young children.
A surgeon, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals, said that for hours on Thursday the Health Ministry prevented ambulances even from going to the scene to aid victims. The doctor said that in the early morning, when the assault was still under way, police officers beat a paramedic and a doctor and refused to allow medical staff to attend to the wounded. News agencies in Bahrain reported that the health minister, Faisal al-Hamar, resigned after doctors staged a demonstration to protest his order barring ambulances from going to the square.
In the bloodstained morgue, Ahmed Abutaki, 29, held his younger brother’s cold hand, tearfully recalling the last time they spoke Wednesday night. “He said, ‘This is my chance, to have a say, so that maybe our country will do something for us,’ ” he recalled of his brother’s decision to camp out in the circle. “My country did do something; it killed him.”
There was collective anxiety as Friday approached and people waited to see whether the opposition would challenge the government’s edict to stay off the streets — and if it did, whether the government would follow through on its threat to use “every strict measure and deterrent necessary to preserve security and general order.” Both sides said they would not back down.
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